Pages

Monday, April 14, 2014

Mary Beth's Monday Musings for April

You all pretty much know I don't clean my stencils, right? I used to. Back in the beginning, each and every one felt so darn precious that I meticulously cleaned them and asked my students to do the same. I think I helped keep the baby wipe people in business.

But then I got kind of careless and, truth be known, I started using so.many.designs. I just became lazy and stopped cleaning them.

Instead, I told myself layers of paint (on a stencil) are cool. And that I like it when old paint transfers to a piece. And yeah, well I guess I do because it is often quite cool in a 'you could do this again' type of way.

The stencils that I carry to class with me.......well, those stencils are beyond layered. Good grief, they have practically doubled in thickness. They have probably transformed from being 7 mil stencils to 11 mil, they are so thick with paint.

I think they are pretty though; some have even transformed into art all on their own!

How lush, don't you just love all that color!

And this one has got to be one of my favorites - pattern on pattern! Gotta love it.

Speaking of Mylar, which you *know* is one of my favorite topics, you must understand we have little scraps of it all over our damn house. I am talking about the drop out parts (stencil scrap). Imagine that intricate stencil above, the one with all the little squares and geometric parts......every place you see an opening......well, imagine that a piece of Mylar had to be cut out of each and every one of those places.

That is what our Lasers do.

When John pulls a stencil off the Laser, those little teeny weeny parts will often go airborne despite his best efforts to control this stencil crap, er, scrap. It gets absolutely everywhere!

Ugh.

My cats get tiny Mylar parts stuck in their fur. John routinely has it on his bare feet. Somehow it tends to migrate around the house. It is horrid on vacuums, all sorts of odd shapes that cling together and clog the hose.

Karyl was packaging shipments the other day and look what she found:

Isn't that a crack up?

You can't make this stuff up.

I am still looking for ways to use the Stencil Scrap. I have played with alcohol ink on Mylar scraps and that is actually quite fun as they make cool transparent embellishments.

Oh, I used to be the same way. One time at an art play day with other women, I had them clean my stencils if they used them. They were scrubbing and washing them. Only mine. I think back to that now and say "Judy, you were crazy". It's sorta freeing to not clean them now. Amen, sista.

I think that's some of my blue paint on the squares stencil! I love the idea of fastening the cut outs to a mixed media piece (like fettucine/linguine) and painting over them. More texture and shapes! Sounds like fun!

Gelli plate play. Use them as masks on the gelli. At the end of some play they will have all that paint and texture like your stencils so you can ass them to other projects!Also use them in your encaustics where you don't want more layers but are still working on your piece. Just make sure to pull them up each layer so they don't get encased.

I love this! I used to meticulously clean all of my stamps and stencils. Now? HA!!! Some of my best loved stencils...by Stencil Girl, of course...are works of art unto themselves! I have one that's so pretty, I hate to use it again!Any time you have too much stencil crap, I mean scrap, feel free to pop a fistful into an envelope and ship it to me! ;)I gave you another mention (with a link) on my 4/11 blog post.